Racial Socialization, Negative Police Stops, and Self-Concept among Black Adolescents

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table Nine: Race and Racism as Structured within and Culturally Propagated through the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

Black youth experience disproportionate likelihoods of being stopped discretionarily, spoken to disrespectfully, and victimized by police, but few studies interrogate associations between negative stops and self-concept or the potential buffering role that racial socialization may play. This study integrates insights from the critical periods thesis and elaborates on the stress process model to examine associations between racial socialization, negative police stops, and Black adolescents’ self-concept. Using data from the National Survey of American Life-Adolescent Supplement (n=1,006), we estimated endogenous treatment-regression models of mastery, self-esteem, and racial centrality based on whether police unfairly stopped adolescents (yes=1). We then modeled interactions between stops and the Comprehensive Race Socialization Inventory (i.e., message source, frequency, and content about race/racism). Police stops were associated with lower mastery, reduced self-esteem, and higher centrality. Message source, number of messengers, and message frequency moderated the impacts of police encounters for mastery and racial centrality. Message content moderated associations between unfair police encounters and mastery and self-esteem, but not racial centrality. This study offers important practical and theoretical implications for how police encounters shape self-concepts among Black adolescents and how racial socialization in its myriad forms can buffer stress across multiple dimensions of the self.

Author

• Ryan D. Talbert, University of Connecticut